What is paleo?

The paleo idea: What were we designed to do and eat?

Do you eat paleo? Do you even (try to) live paleo? The expression paleo or “going paleo” has become damn hip during the last years. But what does it actually mean? Paleo stands for paleolithic, more specifically the Paleolithic Age: a prehistoric period of mankind that reached from 2.6 million years to 10.000 years BC. Today paleo has become a synonym for the diet of our hunter gatherer ancestors living in the late Paleolithic Age – BEFORE agriculture and later industrialisation enabled humanity to cultivate and process food.

As scientists found out that human gene structure today is pretty much the same than in 10.000 BC and human diet has changed dramatically at the same time not only paleo addicts think that having a look at the food we were designed for is not the worst idea.

The so called paleo diet (which in its modern interpretation goes back on our friend Prof. Loren Cordain) follows six basic rules:

Eat as much lean meat, fish and seafood as you can

Eat as much fruit and not starch vegetable as you can

Don’t eat grain and cereals

Don’t eat legumes

Don’t eat dairy products

Don’t eat processed food

Although paleo might not only stand for the primal diet but for a primal lifestyle in general the expression paleo is mainly used when speaking about food. Other names for the paleo diet are the caveman diet, the hunter-gatherer-diet and the stone age diet.